Repose Gray in the Play Room (plus many other pictures of this fun space)

In one of my recent posts, I shared some paint samples that went up in our playroom. I was testing out a few colors and thought surely one of them would be the clear winner. Well, that just wasn't the case.

Instead of buying more samples, I decided it would be better to just go with a neutral light gray we used in our last home (in our master bedroom.)
I remember loving that color a lot and thinking, "I bet it would work with our blue carpet in the play room. So instead of waffling back and forth about it (which I do too often), I decided to head to Sherwin Williams one day last week and get a gallon of Repose Gray. It was definitely the right choice!!

I will start by sharing some pictures of the painting process and even share a "new-to-me" tool I used to help get this painting job done quicker. 
(Side note: these next couple of photos were taken at night, so they are grainy and dark). 

In the last two photos you probably noticed some snazzy wallpaper border going up around the room. ;)
Yea, I decided to just paint over it (more on that later). After doing so, some of the wallpaper started to bubble up under the paint (fun times!) so my hubby was able to scrape off a lot of it making it less noticeable. Thanks, babe!!
 

I decided to paint the walls with this type of roller pad instead of the round rollers because it advertised itself as being a "quicker and easier" way to paint. To my surprise, it was quicker and easier to use it! I'd recommend it...it looks like a paint edger, but it's a paint pad and even does a good job edging borders near the ceiling. :) And with the high ceilings in this room, that was very, very helpful.
We bought ours at Lowe's. 

The mess before it can all be brought back together...

Here is some of the wallpaper we were able to get down.

It's funny how during this process of trying to remove the paper border brought back some memories...
Before we moved into this house, we were told that all of the wallpaper in each room would be removed. I remember even double checking on that because we knew how much work that would be for us to have to do ourselves. We were reassured it would be taken care of. 
Well, by looking at these pictures you can see that that didn't exactly happen. ;)


Have you ever tried taking down wallpaper? Talk about an arm workout! Phew! 
After removing it in several areas of our home, I just decided it was way too much work to get it all down, so I painted right over it in here. There are some good blog posts on how to do this so I figured why not give it a try. In my husband's office (when the time comes to tackle that room), we will try and do it right and take it all out. His office is covered top to bottom in ducks and stripes so it will be coming down at some point. Ha!


Anyways, I guess I'm sharing all of that to encourage folks who are moving to make sure you get in writing whatever it is you are told will happen and want done. Otherwise, it's probably not going to happen unfortunately. 

Whew! Now that that's over, here are some pictures of this fun space finally finished!!

This stairwell has been a wonderful spot to display the art work our kid's want to keep.

We made a magnet board for the kids using a thin galvanized metal sheet.. I purchased ours at Lowe's, but a friend told me she bought hers at Wal-Mart in the auto section. I believe hers was a metal oil drip pan which is different than what we have...but either works for magnets!
The only thing I would say is that with the thinner metal sheet, because the edges are a bit sharp, you are going to want to tape around them making a border so little hands/fingers don't get hurt. I used a few layers of electrical tape to put around ours.

We decided to use chalkboard paint on this entire wall. It ended up working out because I ran out of our gallon of SW Repose Gray. Ha!
It's a fun area for the kids and their friends to use.

My daughter wanted her preschool alphabet letters to be displayed and the chalkboard wall makes a good background for it.

I also shared a post here about our train table. We love the storage it provides underneath for those extra tracks and pieces!

I have accumulated a lot of kids books over the last 10 years (some are from my teaching days) and thought it would be fun to have a reading corner for the kids. The bookshelves were made using rain gutters.  If you're looking for an inexpensive and unique way to display children's books, this is a great option.
I also added a shelf (thrift store find) for their Play-Doh and accessories as well as a storage cube for more toys.

The craft table/area is next to the large window which is a great spot for our girls to create things. :)
If you're looking for inexpensive furniture, thrift stores are great places to shop. Our craft table, chairs, wooden shelf, and shelf/dresser shown in the photo below were all purchased at the thrift store. 

The Lego area was relocated (surprise!) to this little area next to the playroom. I like having the Lego desks next to this window. The amount of sunlight that floods into this little room is great for working and our kids enjoy spending time here.
The wall paint color is the same green we used to paint our son's closet doors.

And I turned this little corner in here into the dress-up area...complete with a map of the US. Ha!
It's fun watching my kids try to find where family and friends live on the map. Because of the scale, all the states don't look too far away from each other. They use to think Florida wasn't very far from Virginia because on the map it looks like an easy trip to make. But when we drove there last month, they started to understand this concept we've been teaching them about drawing things to scale.

Of course this wouldn't be a good play room if our kid's didn't use it so of course I'll end with a couple pictures of our boy and his train table...

                                                          Just look at that focus. Ha!


and our girls using the Lego room...

Sisters <3 May they always have this close bond with one another.

That's it for this space. We love having it and are thankful for the moments spent in it. We know our kids will enjoy it for many years to come and that makes all the hard work worth it!